Islamic Studies' Young Turks

New generation of scholars deplores problems of Muslim world and
seeks internal solutions

By DANNY POSTEL

When Edward W. Said reviewed Bernard Lewis's What Went Wrong? Western Impact
and Middle Eastern Response in the July Harper's, he didn't mince
words.

An "intellectual and moral disaster," he called it, an "ideological portrait
of 'Islam' and the Arabs" suited to "dominant pro-imperial and pro-Zionist
strands in U.S. foreign policy." He objected to Mr. Lewis's argument, widely
cited since September 11, that the Islamic world has become "poor, weak, and
ignorant," ruled by a "string of shabby tyrannies" whose principal opponents
are theocratic revivalists even more hostile to modernity than the despots
who oppress them.

The very problem Mr. Lewis posits -- that something has gone terribly
wrong in the "lands of Islam," and that Muslims have tended to blame others
for it -- is, in Mr. Said's words, "fabricated."

Disagreement between Mr. Lewis, an emeritus professor of Near Eastern studies
at Princeton University, and Mr. Said, a professor of English and comparative
literature at Columbia University, has framed much of the scholarship on Islam
and the Middle East since the publication of Mr. Said's seminal Orientalism
(Pantheon Books) in 1978. But the landscape is now changing as an emerging
group of Muslim scholars shifts the terms of the debate.

That group is beginning to ask precisely the question that Mr. Lewis posed.
Whatever they think of his work as a whole, the question "What went wrong?"
and the vital corollary "How can we make things better?" are central to their
project.

Mr. Lewis, now in his 80s, has been a towering figure in scholarship on the
Islamic world for several decades. Though written before the terrorist attacks,
What Went Wrong? (Oxford University Press) was excerpted in The
New Yorker last November and quickly became a best seller when it was
published in January.

He argues that while the Islamic world was at the forefront of human civilization
and achievement for several centuries, it has been in a protracted state of
decline during the modern age. Once vitally engaged with the outside world,
it has turned inward and views the West with increasing hostility and paranoia.
It has become intolerant, insular, and obsessed with its own victimization.

Many Muslims have a "strong, visceral reaction" to Mr. Lewis that has "nothing
to do with the merits of his arguments," says Seyyd Vali Reza Nasr, author
of Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the Making of State Power (Oxford University
Press, 2001), who recently left a position as associate professor of political
science at the University of San Diego. "It has everything to do," he says,
with Mr. Lewis's reputation as a leader of the intellectual camp associated
with Zionism and hostility toward Islam.

But "why is it that Bernard Lewis is one of the few people asking this important
question?" wonders Nader Hashemi, a doctoral student in political science
at the University of Toronto, who is writing his dissertation on secularism,
democracy, and Islam. "Why are Muslims not asking the same question?"

Shifting Sands

Mr. Hashemi and other dissident Muslim thinkers -- including Khaled
Abou El Fadl, a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles
and author of Rebellion and Violence in Islamic Law (Cambridge University
Press, 2001) -- oppose not only the authoritarian regimes that rule most
Muslim countries, but also the Islamist movements that have risen to prominence
in recent decades. These scholars, who regard such movements as reactionary
rather than liberating, call for a radical transformation in the very structure
of Islamic civilization -- an opening up of Islamic societies to dissent,
toleration, political pluralism, women's rights, and civil liberties.

Do those ideals have a place in Islam? In the forthcoming The Place of
Tolerance in Islam (Beacon Press, November), the Kuwaiti-born Mr. Abou
El Fadl writes that it would be "disingenuous to deny" that the Koran contains
verses that lend themselves to "intolerant interpretation," like the one that
enjoins: "Whomever follows a religion other than Islam this will not be accepted
from him, and in the hereafter he will be among the losers," and the one that
exhorts Muslims to battle unbelievers "until there is no more tumult or oppression,
and until faith and all judgment belong to God."

What Islam's holy book offers are "possibilities for meaning, not inevitabilities,"
he argues. Moreover, he writes, other passages, which "have not been adequately
theorized by Muslim theologians," espouse tolerance and pluralism: "To each
of you God has prescribed a Law and a Way. If God would have willed, He would
have made you a single people," and, "Those who believe, those who follow
Jewish scriptures, the Christians, the Sabians, and any who believe in God
and the Final Day, and do good, all shall have their reward with their Lord
and they will not come to fear or grief."

Thus, not only can the Koran "readily support an ethic of diversity and tolerance,"
but Islamic civilization "was pluralistic and unusually tolerant of various
social and religious denominations" for centuries, Mr. Abou El Fadl writes.
As contemporary fundamentalists are "increasingly shutting off the possibilities
for a tolerant interpretation of the Islamic tradition," turning "its richness
and humanism" into "a distant memory," the task for Muslim reformers, he contends,
is to champion an enlightened interpretation of Islam compatible with pluralism,
toleration, and human rights.

To be sure, there are differences among the new dissidents. Some, like Mr.
Abou El Fadl, are devout Muslims, much of whose scholarship deals with the
Koran and Islamic theology. Others are more secular, including Emran Qureshi,
an independent scholar who is co-editor of a forthcoming essay collection,
The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy (Columbia University
Press, 2003). They approach Islam more on cultural and political than on religious
terms.

One dilemma for the emerging Muslim scholars is the possibility that they
will be perceived as intellectual sellouts, aligned with supporters of Israel
and U.S. foreign policy. "Fouad Ajami Syndrome," the Iranian-born Mr. Nasr
calls it. Mr. Ajami, director of Middle East studies at the Johns Hopkins
University and author of The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation's
Odyssey (Pantheon, 1998), is highly critical of both Arab politics and
much of the Arab intelligentsia. He is on the editorial board of Foreign
Affairs and a consultant to CBS News. Mr. Nasr describes him as "the Anwar
Sadat of Middle East studies." While it no doubt took courage to break ranks,
Mr. Ajami is viewed with enormous suspicion by fellow Arabs for doing so,
and for being welcome in the corridors of official power -- for becoming,
in their eyes, an Arab Uncle Tom.

Mr. Nasr says the new dissidents run the same risk: "Are you there because
you want a job at Yale? Are you there because you want a MacArthur award?"

But while some of the new dissidents' criticisms of the Islamic world coincide
with those of American neoconservatives, the Muslim scholars differ in key
ways. They support the Palestinian cause and are bitterly critical of many
aspects of U.S. foreign policy. And while many neoconservatives see Islam
as an obstacle to democracy, the Muslim dissidents believe that reform can
draw on the Islamic tradition itself.

New Paradigm

Key to their project is a call for a rethinking of the role of the Muslim
intellectual. The Arab intelligentsia has failed to challenge the region's
"wildest and most paranoid fantasies," wrote Kanan Makiya in a recent essay
in Dissent. A professor of Middle East studies at Brandeis University
and author, most recently, of Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising
and the Arab World (W.W. Norton, 1993), the Iraqi-born scholar argues
that instead of undertaking "the hard work of creating a modern, rights-based
political order," Arab intellectuals have helped fuel a "conspiratorial view
of history" that ascribes "all the ills of our own world to either the Great
Satan, America, or the Little Satan, Israel."

The new dissidents are similarly critical of much of the scholarship in Middle
East studies, particularly of a body of work that regards Islamist social
movements as expressions of "civil society" and "resistance" to the state.
Over the past decade, studies in this vein have multiplied and become one
of the dominant currents -- some say the dominant current -- in
the field. The dissidents believe that such studies soft-pedal the reactionary,
repressive politics of the Islamists and obstruct the transformative, self-critical
work that needs to be undertaken in the Islamic world.

One representative of this current is John O. Voll, a professor of Islamic
history and associate director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding,
at Georgetown University. In 1992, he testified to a Congressional subcommittee
about the Sudanese regime, an amalgam of military despotism and Islamic theocracy,
that seized power in a bloody coup in 1989. He described it as "an effort
to create a consensual rather than a conflict format for popular political
participation." The regime allowed no opposition parties and made dissent
a capital offense. Even so, to judge the Sudanese government as undemocratic,
he said, was Eurocentric.

That kind of thinking, says Mr. Qureshi, the independent scholar, is deeply
problematic. Regimes like Sudan's should be unequivocally condemned and opposed,
he argues, not rationalized and defended. "Far too often, the crimes of indigenous
oppressors are tolerated or passed over in silence" by scholars. It is the
responsibility of the intellectual, he says, to condemn authoritarianism in
all its forms, whether secular or religious.

Mr. Voll concedes that the Sudanese regime has committed human-rights violations,
but says he was defending the "conceptual basis" of its rule. "There are many
different forms of democracy, and what they were attempting to do in theory
was to create a consensual form of political participation."

In debates about the politics of the Islamic world, something of an ideological
sleight of hand has taken place, says the Indian-born Mr. Qureshi. While Islamic
fundamentalism is deeply authoritarian, in recent years many of its adherents
have adopted the leftist rhetoric of anti-imperialism. Many scholars of the
Islamic world thus identify Islamic "militants" with the politics of protest
and opposition, he says, portraying them sympathetically as grassroots rebellions
against U.S.-backed authoritarian regimes. While he agrees that U.S. support
for such regimes should be criticized -- indeed, harshly -- he says
that by approaching opposition movements with the tunnel vision of anti-imperialism,
these scholars have become blind to internal problems in Islamic societies.

As an example he cites scholars' failure to recognize what he sees as the
menace of Wahhabism, the highly puritanical sect of Islam dominant in Saudi
Arabia. That was brought to the fore by journalists, not academics, in the
aftermath of September 11, he notes.

Overstating the Case?

Critics of the dissident scholars say they are overstating their case.
Mr. Said dismisses their argument that Arab and Muslim intellectuals have
largely avoided critical introspection. While there is "some justice" to the
claim with respect to Muslim scholars in the West, where, he says, Islam "has
been attacked and vilified," he doesn't think the argument holds up abroad.
"I have never been to a gathering in the Arab world or amongst Arabs elsewhere
at which this issue is not debated," he says. "These questions are being asked."

As for the argument that the Islamic world is in desperate need of more tolerance,
pluralism, human rights, and civil liberties, Mr. Said agrees but adds that
"we need a lot more of it over here, too."

Mr. Hashemi regards such an attitude as "inadequate and disappointing." The
Islamic world lacks the most basic liberties inherent in the democracies of
the West, he argues. Mr. Said's most insightful work, he says, is "not about
the internal problems facing the Arab-Islamic world, but rather the West,
its literature and culture, and the legacy of its empires."

As for resistance among scholars of Middle East studies to criticism of the
Islamic world, perhaps the divide is a generational one. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im,
a Sudanese-born professor of law at Emory University and author of Toward
an Islamic Reformation: Civil Liberties, Human Rights, and International Law
(Syracuse University Press, 1990), says that while the critique of Orientalism
became of central importance for Mr. Said's generation and for younger scholars
influenced by his landmark book, the new thinkers see their task as different.
For them, the critique is a given; it's been done. "There's nothing new about
the imperialists or the Orientalists or the Israeli lobby," and scholars can
get "trapped into a defensiveness" by expending their critical energy in those
directions, says Mr. An-Na'im.

He does not expect scholars whose intellectual projects have revolved around
the critique of Orientalism to suddenly shift their focus. "That generation
is too invested in that paradigm," he says, adding that they have become "even
more defensive" since September 11. Rather, he says, one should listen to
the "new voices" -- those of Mr. Abou El Fadl, Mr. Hashemi, and Mr. Qureshi,
for example -- for the "way forward."

Like Mr. Abou El Fadl, Mr. An-Na'im is a devout Muslim who confronts the tensions
between traditional Islamic law and universal standards of human rights, and
who believes that reform can be grounded in Islam itself. He acknowledges
in his writing that Sharia, or Islamic law, involves "drastic and serious
violations" of the rights of women and non-Muslims. But he argues that there
is a larger message within Islam that transcends those aspects of Sharia that
are antithetical to a modern understanding of human rights. "The fundamental
and eternal message of Islam," Mr. An-Na'im writes, is one of justice and
"the solidarity of all humanity."

"In view of the vital need for peaceful coexistence in today's global human
society," he contends, Muslims must recover that humanistic message and transform
their societies accordingly.

The Islam and Human Rights Fellowship Program, which he directs at Emory,
brings scholars and activists from throughout the Muslim world to develop
"Islamic arguments for their work," he says. "There's a whole generation now
who are taking the issues to the next step."

Precarious Position

Whatever the stance of Arab and Muslim intellectuals living in the West,
says Mr. Nasr, author of Islamic Leviathan, their message must resonate
in the Islamic world itself. While he supports the efforts of the new dissidents
to stimulate critical dialogue among Muslims, he thinks the larger conversation
that needs to take place will "only partially involve scholars in the United
States."

Diaspora Muslims have "made the journey to the other shore" -- they are
"displaced intellectuals who then become irrelevant," he says. In fact, Islamists
in their home countries are "eager to ship them abroad," where their work
will be harmless, Mr. Nasr says. Once they are in the West, they "write and
work for Americans. They write for tenure and for jobs. They write for Western
consumption. They don't really talk to their own communities."

Mr. Abou El Fadl says the intellectual climate in the Islamic world is overwhelmingly
inhospitable to dissident voices. Arabic translations of several of his books
have been prepared, but publication had to be canceled in the face of threats
by Islamists as well as Saudi pressure, he says. (He adds that he has received
death threats from Muslim "fanatics" angered by his writings.)

Writing and teaching at a distance from the societies they are trying to change
gives dissident Muslim scholars some advantages, says Mr. An-Na'im. "Because
of the space they have and the resources available to them, they can make
arguments and develop ideas" essential to the reformation of the Islamic world.

To succeed, of course, their efforts will have to take root in that world,
not just among intellectuals but among the Muslim masses, he and Mr. Nasr
say. "The question for us is how to create conditions for us, the reformers
in the West, to communicate and create constituencies in Muslim societies,"
Mr. An-Na'im says.

On the other hand, asks Mr. Nasr, "in societies that are rapidly losing their
middle classes, and whose middle classes are becoming irrelevant, how are
they going to support reform?"

One of the harshest critics of Middle East studies regards the work of the
new Muslim dissidents as significant. Martin Kramer, editor of Middle East
Quarterly and author of Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle
East Studies in America (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001),
says it's no accident that almost all of the dissidents come from outside
the discipline of Middle East studies, where he believes the Said paradigm
is hegemonic.

Still, he questions what impact the criticism will have beyond the "safe haven"
of American academe. "It can be done as an intellectual excercise. Books can
be written. Tomes can accumulate on the shelf. Does that constitute a reformation?
I think not. The reformation isn't simply the thinking through of another
interpretation of Islam, more in accord with the modern age. It's spreading
that interpretation of Islam to Muslims themselves."

Turning the Tide?

Mr. An-Na'im sees the post-September 11 situation as positive, insofar
as it confronts Muslims with essential questions about the Islamic world and
its future. Mr. Abou El Fadl agrees. The events of September 11 require "a
serious introspective pause," he wrote in the Los Angeles Times. Muslims
"should reflect on the state of their culture and the state of Islamic civilization."

Recent developments suggest that the tide might be turning in Muslim intellectual
life. One is the publication of a United Nations study by a group of Arab
intellectuals. "The Arab Human Development Report 2002," released in July,
warns that Arab societies are suffering because of their oppression of women,
the absence of political liberties, and a self-insulation from books and ideas
from the rest of the world. Of particular significance, according to Ziauddin
Sardar, author of Islamic Futures: The Shape of Ideas to Come (Mansell,
1985), is that the report's authors "place the blame for these problems squarely
on Arab states themselves."

"They make short shrift of the scapegoat theories so common in Arab self-justification,"
he wrote in the New Statesman, a left-of-center British magazine.

Also in July, the government of Malaysia convened an international conference
on "Islam and Politics" in order, it said, to promote "progressive Islamic
thought." Scholars from Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, South Africa,
Turkey, and the United States gathered to discuss such topics as "Islam, Human
Rights, and Democracy" and "Islamic States Post-1945: An Assessment."

"Are some of the values that underlie human rights, women's rights, and democracy
incompatible with certain conceptions of Islam?" asks a promotional flier
for the conference. "What would be the scope and extent of reform that would
be required in Islamic thinking to enable Muslim societies to uphold these
values?"

Those are precisely the kinds of questions that Mr. Qureshi and Mr. Hashemi
plan to take up in a new journal, Salam. They want the journal, for
which they are seeking a financial backer, to be a forum for critical introspection
and dialogue for Muslims throughout the diaspora.

Such developments could be viewed as supporting Mr. Said's claim that there
are myriad "counterorthodox" voices within Arab and Muslim intellectual life.
The new dissidents, alternatively, believe that things are -- slowly
-- beginning to move in the direction that they are urging.

Mr. Nasr points out that the things that give Muslim scholars in the West
a platform from which to speak -- degrees from Western universities,
positions within secular institutions -- are not viewed by religious
Muslim scholars in the Islamic world as authorizing those diaspora scholars
to speak about Islam.

Mr. An-Na'im wants to challenge that. A key element of the dissidents' project,
he says, is to redefine authority in the Islamic world, to "shift the basis
of authority and of religious discourse from the clergy to a secularized,
liberal discourse, thereby challenging the hegemony of traditional voices
within Islam." That poses a dilemma for Muslim reformers, he argues -- "how
to retain credibility as internal agents of change while being critical of
the beliefs and practices of their own community of believers."

The goal, he says, is "not to compete on the old grounds, but to create new
ones."